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RAIF BADAWI HAS had the second instalment of 50 lashes of his sentence of 1,000 postponed.
He had been due to receive the second 50 of his 1,000 lashes today.
His crime? Criticising senior religious figures in ultra orthodox Saudi Arabia.
Today, Amnesty International received information indicating that the flogging has not been carried out today on medical grounds.
Badawi was removed from his jail cell this morning and taken to the prison clinic for a medical check-up before his sentence was due to be carried out. The doctor concluded that the wounds had not yet healed properly and that he would not be able to withstand another round of lashes at this time.
He recommended that the flogging should be postponed until next week. It is unclear whether the authorities will fully comply with this demand.
“Not only does this postponement on health grounds expose the utter brutality of this punishment, it underlines its outrageous inhumanity. The notion that Raif Badawi must be allowed to heal so that he can suffer this cruel punishment again and again is macabre and outrageous. Flogging should not be carried out under any circumstances,” said Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland.
Wife in asylum
Last Friday, he was lashed 50 times outside al-Jafali mosque in Jeddah after Friday prayers. Amnesty International, citing witnesses, said the whole ordeal “lasted around 15 minutes” and that Badawi was shackled.
The governments of the USA, Canada, Germany and Norway among others have issued statements condemning the flogging, and Badawi’s wife, who has sought asylum in Canada, says she is not sure that he can survive a second round of lashes.
“Raif told me he is in a lot of pain after his flogging, his health is poor and I’m certain he will not be able to cope with another round of lashes,” she said.
“I told our children about the news last week so that they would not find out about it from friends at school. It is a huge shock for them. International pressure is crucial, I believe if we keep up the support it will eventually pay off. We must keep on fighting.”
Media watchdog RSF said the punishment was “barbaric” and noted it came after Saudi Arabia condemned the assault on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Badawi is the co-founder of the now-banned Saudi Liberal Network along with women’s rights campaigner Suad al-Shammari, who was also accused of insulting Islam and arrested last October.
Shammari has said the charges against Badawi were levelled after the Saudi Liberal Network criticised clerics and the kingdom’s notorious religious police, who have been accused of a heavy-handed enforcement of sharia law.
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A savage and inhumane country
And crowds of the brainwashed citizens gather to watch the flogging a and chant ‘God is great’. If god existed he/she/it would be a complete and utter c-word for standing by playing the harp while this happens.
We all know where the Saudi embassy is, right?
Badawi’s public flogging is not uncommon in the saudi (refuse to call it kingdom), which often carries out punishments in public.
Last August, Saudi Arabia executed more than 20 death-row inmates in a record mass beheading, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, with the country executing more than 2000 people between 1985 and 2013, Amnesty said.
According to Amnesty, people in Saudi can be executed for a range of crimes including adultery, armed robbery, apostasy, drug-related offences, rape, witchcraft and sorcery.
Most executions are done by beheading and many take place in public. In some cases decapitated bodies are left lying on the ground in public squares as a “deterrent”.
Barbaric-Sharia Law-Evil
It’s not sharia law and it’s not Islam if you care to listen.
Did you even read it? Read the last 2 sentences, – sharia, religious police
Eh….. Its very literally a sharia law state!
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_of_sharia_law_by_country
Congratulations btw on being born yesterday!
The system of government in Saudi Arabia is much much worse than the systems that existed under fascism. This is a country that beheads Filipino nurses if it catches them meeting up to celebrate their religion in their own houses/apartments.
It is absolutely barbaric what Saudi Arabia does. Yet it’s biggest ally is the US, part of the ‘moral’ West.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of terrorism in the world yet because Saudi Arabia is protected by the US it is allowed to do this. It also funds it’s version of religion very extensively around the world. Look at all the Wahhabi madrasses etc in Sarajevo.
Well never mind, they go back to riding camels in a 100 years or so when the west comes up with something to replace oil.
What year is this??!!
In the Islamic calendar, it’s 1436. Which seems about right.
2015
Just six hundred years behind the the rest of mankind
Anyone traveling to work in this area or do business there or otherwise contribute or support them in their reign of oil fueled archaic religiously laughable ignorance needs to examine their conscience, they deserve to be left Forrester alone in their own filth.
Hell in the desert populated by Morons and their unfortunate victims.
Pure barbarism! Sickening. I hated every minute I was there (couple of short trips) . Definitely the least likeable place I’ve ever been.
a total perversion of Islam, House of Saud is just hiding behind religion to brutalise their citizens.
We could do with giving a 100 lashes to the criminals for certain crimes in Ireland
Animals.
Wow their faith must not be that strong if they can’t open up any dialogue about it. Death throws of a (all) religion if you ask me & they will probably take a good few with them before it goes.
Sounds like something straight from the bloody Bible. Religious police ffs.
More anti Muslim stories.
Yesterday 40 Garda arrived to squash a small peaceful protest over water protest.
FG have almost imposed a police state in Ireland but no outrage we will point out faults with other countries.
Gary, there was plenty of outrage when the story was published here on The Journal.
Good man gary but people won’t look at it like that the guards were only doing their job and all that stuff its basically the same thing without the lashes speak up aganist things and your in trouble as I said yesterday you have the right to shut up and do as your told!
@david there was probably the same outrage over yhere with people to but we will never get to see it
When the gardai start whipping people in public, come back to me
@hugh what about the time they baton charged the peaceful protest in Dublin?
For the love of…Organized whippings for blasphemy do not equate to responses to protesters over water (when every single person in the country could afford to pay the measly fee). The Gardai are far from faultless but the two are chalk and cheese.
@hugh wasn’t talking about the water protest! Either way it does free speech is illegal the only difference is severity of the punishment and whether or not we are able to pay is irrelevant its an unjust unlawful tax the people don’t want and when we protest peacefully as is our right we are put in jail or baton charged so you see it’s the same!
Practically all European countries pay a water tax. The protests over the water have been embarrassing to the country. Have the protests really been peaceful? I’m not so sure.
@hughie have you been to the protest? If not then you don’t so stop making an arse of yourself
Shane, it’s wrong for the Gardai to strike somebody with a baton, and it should be, and is, condemned.
If you’re attempting to equate off-the-cuff reactions from a few trigger-happy Gardai with government enforced public lashings, I hope to **** you’re just looking to argue for the sake of it. If you actually see little difference between them, you’re a lost cause.
@paul I see a big difference in the punishment not the so called crime he voiced his opinion and is getting lashed for it which is bang out of order we can’t protest whitout the policy inforcers arresting and baton charging innocent people who are voicing there opinion and nothing done to the guards in question so as I said not a whole lot of difference bar the severity of the punishment!
// not a whole lot of difference bar the severity of the punishment //
Fair enough, but the difference in the severity (and level of approval) of the punishment is so great that you can’t really leave it out of the discussion.
@paul of course you can’t if you read my txts from the start you will see that was in my point the whole time!
Religion poisons everything.
The religious …..?
And we allow the Saudis to finance Mosques in Ireland. Political correctness…
Nobody can say the Saudi’s are soft on crime at least
Actually that’s not true. We can infer that they aren’t very measured or just when it comes to crime and so it’s potentially unlikely that they are really effective. ‘Crime’ is a label of convenience for anything that rocks the boat, or the oil tanker, of the Saud dynasty. Beheading for ‘sorcery’?
Just waiting for Islamic apologists to say this has nothing to do with Islam and that their crybaby tears when pictures are drawn is more important than this kind of uncivilised barbarity.
Give it a lash, Jack.
a relatively tame example of their brutality. they often execute people for speaking out.
you would imagine the same countries that go around would invading/bombing/destroying countries and installing puppet governments in the name of freedom would say something……………………….oh wait the house of saud supports the petrodollar system and the dollar. i guess they are ok.
Horrendous! Rather execute quickly than torture to death. Obviously neither, but given the choice.
Pope Francis expect the punch (lashes) what an endorsement from “God’s earthly representative.
This is a fate worse than death. I can think of some criminals that deserve such punishment but for religious criticism, this is absurd.
Je suis charlie
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